


Every day like a treasure, for faithintheboys (gen, PG-13)

by MissyJack



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Grief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-23
Updated: 2013-11-23
Packaged: 2018-01-02 10:24:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1055668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissyJack/pseuds/MissyJack





	Every day like a treasure, for faithintheboys (gen, PG-13)

**Title** Every day like a treasure  
 **Author** : [](http://missyjack.livejournal.com/profile)[**missyjack**](http://missyjack.livejournal.com/) / Elvis Presley  
 **Recipient** : [](http://faithintheboys.livejournal.com/profile)[**faithintheboys**](http://faithintheboys.livejournal.com/)  
 **Rating** : PG-13  
 **Author's Notes** : 2,746 words. The title is a line from the song Time in a Bottle by Jim Croce. Beta by [](http://mcee.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://mcee.livejournal.com/)**mcee**.  
 **Summary** : Sam takes extraordinary measures in order to spend more time with Dean.

 

When Sam sat down next to him on the park bench, Dean looked at him suspiciously. He looked at everyone suspiciously; he learned that from his Dad thought Sam.

In the sand box in front of them, a small child with a heavy diaper was filling a plastic cup with sand that hadn’t seen a beach for many years. He looked like he was having the time of his life.

“Hey.” said Sam. “He your brother?”

Dean swung his feet as he looked at him. “No, he’s my cat.”

Sam laughed. Dean looked at him, and frowned as the morning sun moved from behind a cloud. As it shone right through Sam, Dean’s eyes widened in fright.

Without another word Dean slid from the bench and moved quickly to the sand-box. He lifted Sammy up under the arms and half dragged, half carried him to the Impala parked under the trees.

*** 

Different park, different year.

Little Sammy was out of diapers now, and climbing over a jungle gym with the agility of a small primate. A small chubby primate with a smear of snot across his face. Dean was sitting on the bench, a comic in his lap, feet still not quite touching the ground.

Sam sat down. He hoped maybe now, a year older, Dean might not run off. It had been hard to pick when to come back – too old and Dean might remember this later, too young and he would still be scared.

Dean glanced up from his comic and then continued reading. After a moment he looked at Sam again, and chewed on his bottom lip in an aching familiar gesture.

“You a ghost?” asked Dean.

“No, not a ghost. More of a …”

Without warning Dean pulled a small knife from his pocket and stabbed at Sam. The knife stuck in the slats of the bench, while Sam’s leg shimmered around it.

“Not a ghost,” said Dean thoughtfully. ”Or a spirit.” Dean reached forward tentatively and pulled the knife from the seat.

“Is that an iron blade?”

“Yeah.” Dean examined the blade, turned it over, and over again and then ran a thumb down its edge. Blood oozed from the cut and he sucked on it for a moment. “Comscrated by Pastor Jim.”

“Consecrated.” Sam automatically corrected. “I’m not going to hurt you, Dean.”

“How’d you know my name?” Dean pointed the knife at Sam. “Betta watch it, my Dad could kill you easy.”

“Your Dad can’t see me.” said Sam. He looked around, and spied the Impala parked just behind them. He could just make out his father inside, looking the other way. That’s how Sam had felt growing up; that most of them time his Dad just didn’t see him.

“He could still kill you.” Dean said with a defiant tilt of his chin. “Whatever you are.”

“I don’t doubt it. Hey, maybe I could be your imaginary friend?”

“Don’t you have any real friends?” Sam spied the shadow of smirk on Dean’s face, the first sign of humor to break through his little man seriousness.

Before Sam could reply, Dean’s whole body tensed and he looked over to where Sammy was sitting under the swings. There was no sign that anything untoward had happened until a split second later when a loud wail broke the silence. Dean leaped from the bench, the comic book fell to the ground, and he ran over. Looking after his little brother as he always would.

*** 

In that last year, before Dean died, as the days ticked down, Sam had decided that his powers might be able to help against the crossroads demon. They’d consulted witches and priests and soothsayers and finally found a Tibetan Buddhist monk living, not in a cave but in a rather nice warehouse conversion in Chicago.

Their hope had been that like Ava, Sam might be able to control demons while, unlike Ava, not becoming an evil psychopath. Geshe Lobsang Chodak had listened to their story, and served them green tea with toasted rice that he poured into pale marble cups. He had agreed to work with Sam, although he seemed doubtful of their success. As they left Dean had mumbled something about the Dagobah system having moved to Illinois.

Chodak taught Sam practices of breath meditation which within a month had him able to project simple images into people’s minds. It proved quite useful for reminding Dean to pick him up a coffee but not for much else.

However after another six weeks, Sam was able to summon minor demons without incantations or rituals. They caught one under a devil’s trap and Sam tried to control it, but it laughed in his face until Dean finally sent it back to hell.

One year after the bargain was struck the crossroads demon had claimed her debt, and Sam was no longer anyone’s little brother.

*** 

Afterwards Sam had gone to stay with Bobby and started working his way through the five stages of grieving. He got a bit stuck on anger.

“It’s not just the bargain,” Sam explained to Bobby in one of the rare moments he felt like talking, a fifth of whiskey playing no small part in it. “It’s that he took care of me, looked out for me my whole life. And who did that for him? No-one.”

“Your dad did his best.”

“Oh come on, Bobby,” Sam banged a hand on the table in disagreement. “Dean looked after Dad too. His childhood ended when he was four.”

Sam drained his glass, the liquor still failing to warm the parts of him that had been cold since he last saw Dean.

Bobby clapped a hand on Sam’s knee. “Neither of you had it easy. And you both turned out damn fine.”

“He raised me, Bobby. Made sure Dad and I didn’t kill each other. How many times… Always there between us, calming us down, never taking sides. And neither of us ever thinking of him.”

*** 

Sam left the salvage yard and headed to Chicago. When he told Chodak about his plan, the monk was silent for a long time. After three hours, Sam left, but he returned the next day, and the day after, and sat in silence opposite the monk.

On the fourth day, Chodak looked up at Sam and said “I will do it. But know this: the past is as it is—you can’t change it, but it may change you.”

Sam solemnly nodded his assent, but smiled inwardly as he heard Dean’s voice whisper to him “Trust the force Sam”.

*** 

Training was harder than anything his dad had put him through, even though most days Sam just sat cross-legged and focused on his breathing. After six months he could manifest himself as a thought form, a tulpa, and appear wherever and whenever he visualised. Only for a few minutes, but Chodak said that the more intense the emotional connection to the place or person he visualized, the longer he would be able to manifest.

Chodak said anything would do as a sigil, it was simply a way of focussing thoughts, but that it would help if it evoked Dean in Sam’s mind. Sam chose a symbol from the cover of _Led Zeppelin IV_ and as he practised tracing it out, he had one of those moments where he started smiling, as he imagined Dean teasing him for finally learning to appreciate classic rock. He ended up crying, his tears dissolving the chalk outline.

Chodak gave him a small stone, a fire opal, which flashed different colors as it lay in the palm of Sam’s hand.

“When you gather sufficient energy, the stone will glow bright.”

Sam turned the opal over in his hand. “And he will be able to see me, hear me?”

“Yes, but remember the past cannot change, it already is as it will be.”

“How long can I go back for?”

“How long and how many times are not known. Many things are at play here. When your time is near finished, the stone will lose its light.” The monk closed Sam’s hands around the stone with his own.

“You will have less time than you want, but exactly as much as you need.”

*** 

The first time Sam went back he just stood behind a tree and watched. Dean was about five or six, and Sam’s younger self was still a toddler. They were staying at Caleb’s place. Sam didn’t remember it of course, but he still had a photo Caleb had taken of them with their Dad outside the cabin.

Sam had no physical sense of himself when he manifested, it felt almost like a dream. The world looked faded, like old sepia film footage, except for Dean who stood out in solid bright colours.

When he arrived they were unpacking the car. His father looked so young, younger even than in the photo, but still with that worried preoccupied air about him that Sam remembered. That expression was already mirrored on Dean’s face, and it hurt Sam to see Dean already acting like someone with a duty and responsibilities.

The last thing he saw, as he faded back to his own time, was Dean sitting in the front of the Impala, inches yet from seeing over the steering wheel, pretending to drive.

*** 

Dean was sitting on the step outside a motel room. Sam remembered this motel because of the large purple fibreglass elephant in a garden bed near their room. He’d spent hours clamouring over it, swinging on its trunk and trying to get Dean to pay him some attention.

He could see his five year old self now, trying to balance on the elephant’s rounded back, every so often calling out “Dean look at me! Lookatme! Deeeean!‘ while Dean sat sharpening a hunting knife on a whetstone, a book open between his feet.

“Hey,” said Sam, leaning against the hood of the Impala. “What’s the book?”

“Treasure Island. ‘bout pirates and stuff.” Dean glanced up. “But not silly pirates—mean ones who murder people.”

“Sounds scary.”

“Sorta,” Dean looked thoughtful, and squinted up at Sam. “Why do people write stupid, funny stuff about bad things? You know like ghosts and things. I mean, they’re evil and they kill people.”

“I think they do it because they don’t like being scared.”

“They should get weapons then.” Dean put the knife and stone aside. “Know what I’m going to be when I grow up?”

Sam smiled. “A fireman?”

A shadow crossed Dean’s face. “No. No, I don’t like fire.”

“Sorry, I just… What then?”

“A sailor. On a big ship. And save people lost at sea.” Dean waved his arm around, indicating the great unknown beyond the Mid-West. ”And go all round the world like my Dad did.”

“Sounds fun. Does your Dad tell your stories about going to other countries?”

“My Dad went to a war and his friends got killed.” Dean went back to sharpening his knife. “I don’t want to be in a war.”

*** 

Over the next few visits Dean grew more at ease with Sam. He just seemed to accept the random appearances. Sam figured Dean’s life had already been full of enough things that most people wouldn’t believe; accepting Sam was not much of a stretch.

They talked about nothing of consequence. Dean was wary of questions about his brother or his father. Once Sam asked him about his mother, and was surprised when Dean answered him.

“She died. She had really really long yellow hair. I think angels have hair like that. And she made the best sandwiches. Dad tells everyone it was a car accident but it wasn’t. I remember the smoke and I saw her…’

*** 

As Sam moved forward in his childhood timeline, it became easier to pin point places and times, because he actually remembered them. Like the cabin decorated with large stuffed fish whose dead glass eyes stared at him until he made had Dean cover all of them with bits of clothing so they didn’t watch Sam while he slept.

It was hard—being there and not really being there. At first he’d wanted to be Dean’s best friend, well best _imaginary_ friend. But he couldn’t manifest for more than five minutes at a time and that rather limited their relationship. It didn’t matter though, because Sam treasured every moment, every extra time, he got to have with Dean.

He picked one place because the motel owner had a big lumbering bloodhound that had produced buckets of drool that he and Dean had smeared on each other in screaming delight. Sam materialised late in the afternoon, and watched Dean and himself playing until the sun dipped down. His Dad appeared from the motel room, and dragged a reluctant little Sam inside.

Bath time, thought Sam, and winced at the memory. His dad had always scrubbed him with a ruthless efficiency. However, sometimes, when John was away and he and Dean took a bath together, they would stay in there for ages playing like baby otters as they slipped and slid and squealed around in the bath.

On this occasion, rather than following his Dad inside, Dean ran over to the diner attached to the motel, and stuffed a quarter into an ancient arcade game.

After a few moments a disappointed electronic trill emanated from the machine. Dean dug his hand into his pocket, but pulled it out empty. He looked pissed. Even at this age, he never had enough quarters thought Sam, amused.

*** 

Sam had been back thirteen times in thirteen days and the glow inside the fire opal had started to fade. Sam figured he probably could get one more longer visit in, stay for maybe fifteen, twenty minutes. But when to go back to? How to choose twenty minutes out of Dean’s life—the last twenty minutes Sam would ever spend with him, because Chodak had been clear this was a one time one deal.

Trying to choose nearly overwhelmed him. Finally, he sat down and concentrated on the sigil.

*** 

It was a bar not unlike any of the dozens of bars Sam had been in over the years, but he remembered this one because it had a collection of Chevy insignia and hubcaps nailed up over the pool table. If he remembered correctly, Dean had insisted on a two hundred mile detour just to have a beer there.

Sam stood in the crowd next to the cigarette machine and scanned the room until he located himself, sitting alone at a table with a barely touched beer in front of him. At the far end of the bar, he could just make out Dean, surrounded by three very attractive women who were each eyeing Dean as voraciously as if they just found a pair of Manolo Blahniks in the General Feed Store.

Sam watched as Dean glanced over at Sam and then returned to soaking in the female attention being poured upon him. A moment later he signalled the barman, and after collecting a couple of beers, excused himself from his admirers and made his way over to where Sam’s younger self was sitting. Within a few minutes Sam and Dean were talking and drinking, the journal closed and forgotten, the girls ignored.

As Sam observed from them, he remembered back to how he’d felt then. It had been a hard year: he’d lost Jess and his life at Stanford, they’d found Dad and then had to part from him. He’d spent a lot of time angry—and Dean had copped a lot of it. They’d saved each other’s lives a few times a piece and Dean had been there as Sam’s dreams had become aching, terrifying visions. Sam had no doubt even then that Dean would die for him. But it was these moments that Sam remembered most, the quiet ones which he didn’t appreciate enough at the time, when Dean was looking after him without Sam even realising.

He watched them for nearly thirty minutes, soaking in the sight of Dean laughing, and telling bad jokes by the way Sam was rolling his eyes. As time ticked by Sam had to draw deep on his powers to keep himself there. Finally the scene started to flicker but, before it dissipated, Sam could’ve sworn Dean looked straight at him and smiled.


End file.
